It’s a good question. Unfortunately, I tend to advance arguments over a series of blog posts (which is probably why I end up permanently a niche blogger — most people coming to my blog for the first time probably have no idea what I’m on about).

We now understand the endgame here. We now get the business model. The idea is not “send your students to us!”. The idea is to become yet another online vendor of services to higher ed.

[It also worth noting that a number of others have been making this argument as well. Michael Feldstein’s April 2013 article is probably the most complete example, but Downes, Wiley, Phil Hill, Bryan Alexander, Amy Collier, Derek Bruff and others have alluded to aspects of this transition too. (I missed people there — I’m sorry, not intentional)]

But here we go, working backwards. Just a sample, because, as I said, it’s been an obsession:

Schools are going to have to build online resources with someone. It could be CourdacityX, it could be Pearson, or it could be with each other. The online resources are coming. It’s really just a matter of choosing how we want to build them.

What’s happening right now is that xMOOCs are moving backwards into replicable content from the interaction and assessment pole while textbooks are are moving forward into interaction and assessment from the replicable content pole.

The end result of this is not necessarily massive classes. It’s broadly used courseware — software that provides much of the skeleton of standard classes the way publisher texts do today. In other words, the best way to think of a MOOC isn’t really as a class brought to your doorstep — it’s more a textbook with ambitions.

What I think is missed in the hoopla about xMOOCs is — if you look at this long term — this is precisely what has happened. Right now, as we look at the first pass of these courses we are looking at new video, new pieces, etc. We think of it as a new course being “run”. But these courses will start to be rerun soon, and at that point it is basically OCW with a cohort.

“What’s a better idea [than traditional OCW]? Framework-based, open teaching materials with assessment baked in…A project where multiple campuses draft up a couple frameworks that work, and start building 2-8 hour modules on the basic skills stuff that is a barrier for our students…In ways multiple campuses can use out-of-box, from web-enhanced, to blended, to online.”

20 thoughts on “As we were saying… (Coursera as Provider of Courseware)”

Thanks for taking the time to do this Mike. You know, I really didn’t see this as the endgame. But you were right – you win most prescient post of the year award with “We now understand the endgame here. We now get the business model. The idea is not “send your students to us!”. The idea is to become yet another online vendor of services to higher ed.” That looks like what they want to do.
I hope to get around to blogging it too.

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About Me

Among other things, I run the Digital Polarization Initiative, an cross-institutional initiative to improve civic discourse by developing web literacy skills in college undergraduates. Have a class that wants to join? Contact me at michael.caulfield at wsu.edu.